Dear Harper,
I have been writing to you for some time now. Writing has always been a passion of mine. I went to college to be a writer. For nearly 16 years I have been eating, sleeping, and breathing writing. It has waxed and waned over that course. Months of writers block setting in, no words to type, no pencil to paper.
I waited ten months, ten long months to write to you again. It is not because I don't love you, but because the words were escaping me. I let them disappear. It had died inside of me and I was waiting for a rebirth. It happens from time to time. My purpose has always been to tell you things you need to know so that maybe one day I can help someone who is weathering the storm set before them.
It was nearly thirteen years ago when I stepped foot onto campus the first time with big dreams of being an entertainment journalist. Things seemed promising. But that was not my destiny. For a while I thought that my dream had escaped me. That I had let it get away by being a 20 year old that had better things to do that my course work. Oh how wrong I was. The best is always yet to be.
I never write for me anymore, it's always for you. While writing relieves a certain amount of emotion that builds up, it isn't for me. I always dreamt, even from the start, that my words would move someone. Empower them. Encourage them to become the person they were born to be. I believe I was born to be a writer, though my words never set forth that encouragement, only strung me along the way. Atta girls coming from time to time.
I spend lots of time writing to you in my head, sometimes my finger never touch the keys. But please believe, that when they do it is nothing but heart felt, gut wrenching emotion pouring out from them. Do not pity me for they are not always sad tears. In fact, often times they are tears of absolute joy that I got to know you at all. For that, I am thankful. You have carried me without even being here.
As your birthday approaches, my heart saddens, a loss that I will never get over. Time does not make it easier but I learn to move forward, never forgetting but using you as a catalyst to help others, to soothe their pain and to relate to their sorrows.
While losing you brought me the most wretched heartache, it also brought a breath of life into my soul. Empowering ME to become the person I am today. So I wanted to be a writer...and thanks to you I finally feel like one.
I love you sweet bean.
Love always, with a heart full of new wonder and excitement,
Mommy
I leave you with this sweet darling, it has inspired my life in so many ways. I thought I had a rocket exploding from me, a lioness roaring the words out, but I was wrong. You were my rocket sweet love, and for that, I thank you.
So You Want To Be A Writer
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
~Charles Bukowski
so you want to be a writer?
by
Charles Bukowski
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.
don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16549#sthash.jluerwyL.dpuf
